All the best moments from the E3 Gaming Expo

Keanu Reeves surprised everyone by becoming a character in the new video game Cyberpunk 2077. Picture: Mark Ralston/ AFP)Source:AFP

From Hollywood A-listers to superheroes, time-loops, demons and a company offering bootleg knock-offs of its own games — there’s been a lot going on at this year’s E3 Expo in Los Angeles.

Industry heavyweight Microsoft has revealed the hotly anticipated Cyberpunk: 2077, surprising everyone with the revelation Keanu Reeves was a character in the game — followed by Mr Reeves himself walking on stage to reveal the April 2020 release date to an ecstatic crowd.

Publisher Bethesda also unveiled footage of Doom: Eternal, its sought-after sequel to 2016’s action-packed and heavy-metal themed demon-shooter Doom, which is launching on November 22.

You’ll have to wait until later this year for the next instalment of Doom.Source:Supplied

The next instalment in the company’s alternate history Wolfenstein series, Youngblood, was given plenty of attention as well, with a video showing Jess and Soph, the daughters of series protagonist BJ Blazcowitz, heading to Nazi-occupied Paris in 1980 to search for their missing father and kill a lot of enemies in the process.

The game is set for release on July 26, alongside VR game Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot, which will let the player take on the role of a resistance hacker causing Nazi robots to fight each other.

Also unveiled by the publisher was a time-looping action shooter game Deathloop, which pits two protagonists with competing goals against each other in an endlessly repeating conflict, and Ghostwire: Tokyo, a paranormal sci-fi game in which your character battles paranormal elements causing people to vanish from the Japanese city in a similar style to movie Left Behind.

Fans of the company’s beleaguered online role playing game Fallout 76 were told AI-controlled characters were finally coming to the game, along with a Battle Royale mode, and a mobile game based on the classic Commander Keen series was also unveiled.

Ubisoft opened their show with a symphony orchestra playing music from the Assassin’s Creed games ahead of an announcement of an international tour of the orchestra covering the series’ music.

The big announcement was the official unveiling of hacker-action game Watchdogs: Legion, set in a near-future, post-Brexit London where the government has essentially collapsed and crime gangs and authoritarian private paramilitary organisations are running everything — and the locals have had enough.

Watchdogs: Legion is set in post-Brexit London.Source:Supplied

Ambitiously, the game — set for a March 6, 2020 release — will reportedly allow you to play as quite literally anyone in the game world, with the lives of every single human in the game reportedly being simulated, including their daily routine and family relationships.

The gameplay demo showed a range of resistance characters, including a fighter, a drone expert, an infiltrator, and an extremely badass grandmother.

The showcase also revealed more information on the upcoming Ghost Recon: Breakpoint open-world tactical shooter game, along with additional content and updates for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 and Rainbow Six: Siege.

A dance performance led the announcement for Just Dance 2020, while free-to-play online sports game Rollerball was unveiled, with the conference rounded out by news the game Gods & Monsters, developed by the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey team but focusing on myths and legends in a colourful, larger-than life setting with a distinctive art style. It is set for a February 2020 release.

Also announced was the company’s own subscription service, Uplay+, working in pretty much the same way as Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass and EA’s Origin Access services and launching in September.

Publisher Square Enix announced Marvel’s Avengers will be coming to PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia in May 2020, with the superhero team finding themselves the victims of a devastating attack, that has destroyed their flying aircraft carrier and subsequently disbanding — until they reunite five years later to face a new threat.

The company also announced a two-part remake of Final Fantasy VII, releasing on March 3, 2020, with another highlight being the August 19 release of Oninaki, a Japanese role-playing game where players take on the role of Kagachi, whose duty is to usher Lost Souls into the next world. He meets a mysterious woman named Line and soon finds his fate entwined with blood and death, according to the official announcement.

The delightfully offbeat Devolver Digital also unveiled Fall Guys, a multiplayer game where 100 cartoon-like creatures make their way through a Wipe Out-style obstacle course in a race for the winner’s crown and set for a 2020 release; Carrion, a unique take on the action-horror genre where you play a deadly lab creature which has escaped from containment and is going on a murderous revenge rampage, and an expansion for Enter The Gungeon, entitled House of the Gundead, and also aiming for a release in 2020.

Devolver Digital has decided to bootleg its own titles.Source:Supplied

Hilariously, the developer also announced bootleg versions of its own games in the form of Devolver Bootleg, an eight-in-one compilation of games such as Enter The Gun Dungeon, Hotline Milwaukee, and Ape Out, Jr, lovingly ripping off Devolver titles Enter The Gungeon, Hotline Miami, and Ape Out; it is available now on PC.

No matter which platform you play or genre you enjoy, there’s plenty of very exciting stuff on the way in the next 12 months — which is only good news as the games industry continues to grow and be embraced by ever more people around the world.

The author travelled to E3 as a guest of Ubisoft

What game announcement from E3 2019 excited you the most? Continue the conversation on Twitter @RoyceWilsonAU